I guess maybe there is some reason for something to kind of gnaw at you, back in the back of your mind… something that seems to not be finished, not quite done, that you feel responsible for completing, but you just don’t know what the hell it is that you should do about it, or even what it is. Like waiting for the other shoe to fall.

It is late, and I should be sleeping.

It is late, and I should have accomplished so much by now.

It is late, and I wonder if it is too late?

Somewhere there is an answer to every question that I can think up, but first I have to ask the question, then I have to be smart enough to recognize the answer, when it is right there, in front of me.

That takes time. And I don’t know if I have the time I need. I guess you never have enough time, no matter if you are a newborn, or if you care or don’t care, or even if you just accept what is handed to you.

Time is a funny concept.

Time is something that man came up with, to mark the passage of time; there had to be some way to account for the space daylight and darkness, between sunrise and sunset, between birth and death.

Anniversary, noon, Sunday, breakfast, birthday, Christmas day, an appointment in court, dentist appointment, doctor’s appointment, automobile registration, the Junior Prom, the day Grandpa died, Spring, winter, youth, old age, retirement, workday, night…. All are markers in our personal accounting of time.

There are so many markers that we file away, that we pass by without really noticing, but they are there. We have special meanings for them. They come and they go, and they will come again, sometimes.

The span of life is divided by centuries, be decades, by eons, by years, and the years by months, by weeks, by days. Days number the years, the months. Days are broken into hours, the hours to minutes, the minutes to seconds.

Time is measured on a clock, a watch, an hourglass, a sundial. It is measured by the arc of the bright orb in the sky, by the arcs of the stars in the night sky. Seasons and eons and decades and hours and weeks and time passing slowly and steadily, and time going by so quickly.

You can take time, you can waste it. You can make time count, you can account for your presence during it, you can try to accomplish something in a certain amount of it. You can plan for something to happen at a certain time. You can wish you had more of it, or that it would pass more quickly than it seems to be passing.

We do not truly understand time, or what it is for us, what it can be for us. We take it for granted, and we take it very seriously.

To one incarcerated, time can be a punishment. To one who is edging toward death, time can be a torture. To those left behind by the dead passing, time can be a blessing or a burden, or a comfort or an agony.

To an unborn child, time can be a collection of chemical reactions that form a life with a personality and a mindset and an attitude and emotions and the ability to think and feel and be afraid and to do noble things, or things less than great, but the simple fact remains that in time, the baby will grow to the child, to the youth, to the young adult, to the full adult, to the older adult, to the aged, then to the incapacitated, and finally return to the earth… full cycle, and what is done from the beginning to the end will be another sort of measure.

It takes time to sit here and write these lines. Time is used in thinking, in trying to figure how to phrase things, even in just sitting here, hitting the keys in response to whatever flows through my mind.

Time is.
Everything revolves around it.

They say this world has been in existence for a certain amount of time. The religions of the world say that this world was created by a supreme being, in a certain amount of time, but they are unsure how time was measured by that supreme being. Certainly the time of God is not the same as the time of Man?

Time is awfully damn powerful.

It is more than explosions deep within the bowels of the earth, where molten lava gives strong meaning to the images of hell. It is more powerful than those fascinating happenings in deep space, where we are told our world originated. Time is more powerful than the tornado or the hurricane that destroys everything in its path. It is more powerful than all the armies of the world. More powerful than the Pope, than the President, than the King or Queen or the dictator. More powerful than a simple thought… and a thought can be mighty powerful.

But all of the above stop, at some point in time. Time does not stop. It continues, and will always be. Even if we cease to be, time will continue.

Eventually our world will be used up, we will be used up, even if we find other worlds to inhabit… eventually we will be gone. We will not even be a memory, because there will be no one left to remember.

But time will continue to pass.
Even our God cannot control time.